architecture for travellers

Venice: Base for the ‘Monument to the Female Partisan’ (Italy)

This project is also referred to as the ‘Monument to the Female Resistance Fighter’

In 1964, Augusto Murer’s sculpture ‘The Female Partisan’ was selected in a competition to replace the terracotta sculpture by Leoncillo that was destroyed by a bomb in 1961.

Carlo Scarpa was engaged to locate the sculpture and suggested placing it in the water near the Giardini where he felt it would be seen from above and would have greater impact. There he attached it to a floating caisson that could rise and fall with the tide. Scarpa then designed a composition of square stepping stones, constructed of concrete blocks topped with Istrian stone, that would lead people down to the sculpture. With this project Scarpa again engaged with the idea of the rising waters of Venice that he had explored at the Querini-Stampalia Library a few years before.

Initially, the authorities blocked public access to the water, and then for many years the monument lay damaged and suffered from neglect. Beginning in 2009 renovations were made to the entire monument, replacing many of the damaged blocks, improving public access and reviving its presence along the waterfront for visitors to the Giardini.